And always about protecting the hegemony of the rich and powerful.

It's never about the struggling artist/inventor just wanting to be paid for their work as the lobbyists and the politicians they own pretend every time they want to fuck over regular people some more.

When I look at these patents all of them seem to be patenting others inventions from years ago. So I hope prior art wins.

Why can they even patent stuff they didn't invent?

I read the heated bed patent and it was about the way it's built, so I'm not convinced it's a general hot bed patent but something more small detail about how they are using it.

I suspect someone will need to do more research and this article is a knee jerk reaction

Eastern District of Texas is extremely favorable to patent trolls. It’s not a coincidence that they filed the suit there.

That seems geared only towards FDM printers, so SLA (resin) is still ok-ish? I do suppose those really big powder printers could also suffer.

So when do we have fun with the ip owners in moonbase alpha?

I hope it gets tossed out of court considering companies have been freely using these patents for years and their just now going after someone because Bambu has been so much more successful than a lot of the cottage-type companies who'd previously been building most printers. You can't simply wait for a big fish to decide to start enforcing your patent rights because by then it's been used to much without any push back that you've effectively given up the rights.

The old adage: Young companies innovate while old companies litigate.

Disposable what?!?!

We have 3 Stratasys printers at work and yeah, you're absolutely correct.

To add, their 'professional' slicer program "Insight" is the most user hostile piece of software I've ever laid my eyes on. Straight out of 1992 levels of awful. The workflow, the UI (if you can call it that), everything.

The other 'user friendly' slicer is "GrabCAD Print", an Apple style piece of garbage. It lacks everything beyond basic functionality, yet lately they've been pumping it full of subscription locked features.

Honestly, fuck this company.

Edit: nevermind my reading comprehension is stuck at kindergarten level

The problem is that most people aren't making RepRap printers from scratch, they're buying kits which has everything included.

Bambu makes decent gear, I don't think we want to have the only option being Chinese machines which always makes compromises to make it cheaper. And that's coming from a person who uses Chinese printers.

Almost not surprising. Inventors and R&D businesses patent things all the time, then it takes a while to claim them. There was a guy in Australia who apparently invented WiFi (he calls it "wiffey") and he successfully asserted his patent against WiFi manufacturers worldwide such that they paid him a couple pennies in royalties for every chip manufactured.

The saving grace is that patents only last for 20 years. After that, anyone can use the design, like Gillette's double edged safety razor (which is why their modern razors are so silly and change every few years).